Educator Answers Rep. King’s Question on How White Nationalism is Offensive: This is Stuff a 7-Year-Old Would Know

On Saturday, CNN’s S.E. Cupp had an author and anti-racism educator on to answer Rep. Steve King’s question about how white nationalism became offensive.

Speaking to the New York Times’ King, posed this question: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”

Here was Tim Wise‘s answer to the question posed by a sitting member of Congress:

It’s offensive because it goes against at least the stated principles of the United States, even though as a country we have never lived up to them, historically. We certainly had a rhetoric that said we were more than just a white republic, so that’s number one. They certainly ought to be known as offensive at least since the Civil Rights movement, which if you’re going to continue to endorse white supremacy or white nationalism, or if your going to believe that western civilization is essentially a biological thing that can only be furthered by people who are ‘white’ then by definition you’re rejecting the legacy…You would think this was basic stuff that even a 7 or 8-year-old would know, but apparently, there’s a lot of folks in our country who haven’t gotten the memo yet.

Wise later added that when King says things like this it is an effort to normalize the language. He was not convinced, however, that Trump had the same motives when he likewise used the word ‘nationalist’, noting that when it comes to Trump it is “all about him.”

Watch above, via CNN

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